Greening the Wedding Industry: one flower at a time

About 2 years ago, I learned about the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market in, you guessed it, Seattle. They are a cooperative wholesale flower market providing locally grown flowers to florists, designers and other businesses. The idea stuck with me. Why are flower farmers driving all over town delivering individual flower orders to all the same florists? Burning gas and time that would be better spent growing more flowers?

Beyond that, how do we get more sustainably raised, local flowers into more hands? There is a massive amount of money being spent on imported flowers that could be diverted into the local economy supporting farmers who in turn spend that money on paying employees, shopping at local farm stores, etc.

People spend more money on weddings than probably any other event in their entire lives. Love it or not, that is the truth. There is enormous potential to create a massive impact in our local farming community by making local, sustainably raised flowers more accessible to more people especially within the wedding industry.

So, I started pitching the idea to fellow farmers, designers and now with a lot of help and hard work, Piedmont Wholesale Flowers is a real thing. We are starting small, just a few hours a week in a rented warehouse space in Durham, but we have big dreams. We have the potential to completely transform the way local flowers are bought and sold in our area. We have the opportunity to bring more sustainability into our local wedding industry, to help make these incredible flowers easily available to more designers who want to support local, but found it too difficult to navigate in the past. This is a big deal.

Help us spread the word. This is the first, local only, wholesale flower market on the East coast. Help us grow this into something amazing.